Run CD Games from Harddrive?

[JLR2000]

Ok, not sure if this is the best place to post, but I thought I'd try it out.  My kids have some games on CD that require the CD in the drive.  They are all under 5 years old and I don't want them handling CDs, is there a simple way to get the games to run from the HD?  I'm considering ripping to a nero .nrg file and using daemon tools to mount the images, but again that seems complex. I'd just like the game to play at the click of the shortcut on the desktop (no cd in drive).  Anyone know of a good way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for your input!

[Silver]

If the game is looking for the CD as some form of copy protection, then the only easy way is using something like Daemon tools, or Alcohol 120% (my preference) - or even to search the web for a "No-CD Crack" that are sometimes available.

[lucindrea]

hey could be worse , my nephew figured out that a slice of Bologna fits perfectly into the CD tray of my brothers $5000 stereo system.

deamon tools is probly your best bet.

[MnMCaputo]

some of the no cd cracks can be found at www.gamecopyworld.com 

[Beeeph]

definitely gamecopyworld!

[papaschtroumpf]

Ok, not sure if this is the best place to post, but I thought I'd try it out.  My kids have some games on CD that require the CD in the drive.  They are all under 5 years old and I don't want them handling CDs, is there a simple way to get the games to run from the HD?  I'm considering ripping to a nero .nrg file and using daemon tools to mount the images, but again that seems complex. I'd just like the game to play at the click of the shortcut on the desktop (no cd in drive).  Anyone know of a good way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for your input!

Funny how some people react to this post... I guess different people have a different experience/frame of reference!

You will find no-CD patches for a lot of games at gamecopyworld, but the games my kids play were desgined for win98 machines that don't have big hardrives, so they don't have an option to install all content on the HD so they require a CD-ROM, plus the guys that make no-CD patches don't really care about cracking "Oui Oui's big adventure", "Sesame Street Let's make a word!" and "Dr Seuss' wonderful world". 


you can do it from a shortcut to a batch file which mounts the CD first, then launch the game itself. Look in the daemon tool help for how to mount a CD from a batch file. You can then make a shortcut to the batach file, you can even edit its properties to make the icon look like the original games'.
The questions has been asked a few times already, so search for daemon tools in this forum.

[BobbyG66]

I tried out "Alchohol 52%" and it worked great..
It does use up disk space, it copies the whole cd onto a virtual drive. That pretty much doubles the normal install size.

[saint]

Use a CD-ROM emulator that creates virtual CD-ROM images on your system and automounts them when you click. That's what I do. I think it's VirtualCD that I'm using. I'll check next chance I get, but go look for VirtualCD. It does exactly what you want and all your kids have to do is double-click the icon they want to play.

--- saint

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah, it's what I do as well..... no cd cracks are a pain, because you have to search for them again if you ever reinstall. 

[JLR2000]

Thanks for all the input guys....I did find a daemon tools add on (Daemon Script) that looks like it will work, but this VirtualCD sounds interesting.  I'll check it out this weekend.

Gracias!

[RacerX]

Nero has it's own virtual drive app as well. 

Then there's CD Space, which I am a big fan of.

But one thing you need to be careful of, at least with Windows 98SE, is not to have too many virtual drives defined at the same time, because once you pass a certain limit, you can have trouble with certain audio players like Musicmatch Jukebox and even Windows Media Player.  I ran into this once.  I think the limit was 3 virtual drives IIRC (not CD images, you can have as many of those as your hard drive will hold).  But it may have been 4 or 5.

But if you have a problem, you'll know it, and just delete one virtual drive at a time until your media player works again.

[lucindrea]

also keep in mind ( although for a cab this doesnt do much ) gaming companies are starting to make it so their games will not run if you have a cd emulator installed on your system .. somthing i think is just plain dumb concidering that if you run a virt cd most times you ran a crack anyway , not to mention the whole thing about my kids not destroying my cd's!!! and i own the game can make a backup etc etc .. *sigh* sometimes i truly hate corp. greed ( not the programers etc , the sales man who sold their "copy protecction" to the distrubitors that req the programers to let out a patch just to fix the stuff the crap on the cd broke )

[papaschtroumpf]

Yeah, it's what I do as well..... no cd cracks are a pain, because you have to search for them again if you ever reinstall. 

Or you could save them in a corner of your hardrive and back them up regularly 
CD emulator is much easier though as long as you've got the harddrive space.

[SmokinGun]

Any of you guys ever tried Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne with Alcohol 120?  I can't get that game to work with a viartual drive.  Any of you have the same poblem?